To 'Sir', With Distrust

Relocated or were not traceable.

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No one knows.

Death and birth are natural. While it is correct that the names of dead persons must be deleted from the electoral rolls, is it also not correct that young persons who have attained the age of 18 on a specified date must be included in the electoral rolls? Given the crude birth rate of Bihar, the number of persons who had, since the elections to the Lok Sabha in 2024, attained the age of 18 would certainly run into a few lakhs. Have they been included? The ECI did not respond, and nobody knows.

How did the ECI conclude that 36 lakh persons had ‘permanently relocated’ or were ‘not traceable’? Did the ECI do a house-to-house survey? Did the persons concerned admit that they had permanently migrated to a place outside Bihar? Did the ECI hold an enquiry into the whereabouts of the 36 lakh persons? When and why did the ECI jettison the judicially-interpreted criterion of ‘ordinarily resident’ and substitute it by the polysemous ‘permanently relocated’? No one knows.